The NormalNess Podcast – Season 2 Episode 7 Rewards and Accountability
In this episode I review what reward and accountability strategies I’ve used in the past, and how most haven’t actually worked for me.
You can listen below or subscribe via iTunes.
Episode Transcript:
Today I’d like to talk about the concept of rewards and accountability. The thing is, neither of them work for me. I know that one of the things that people say to do is to set yourself a reward. So I have done x task, I can go by why. And on the surface, that’s, that’s quite smart. It’s a logical, you know, ties an objective to a clear outcome. And he does not work in this test for me, because here’s the thing, as soon as I hear dou x and you can go by or dou y Iger. Well, I’m actually an adult. So I could just go do or by y right now, without having done the other project or thing x like absolutely nothing to stop me. So it doesn’t work for me at all. I don’t know If it’s one of those things that just becomes a generic piece of advice that everyone tells you to do it and no one’s actually considered if it works or not, if it’s the sort of thing that descends upon listicles and so called thought leaders spout it all the time rather than actually looking into if it works, maybe it does work for some types of people, and I’m not one of them. I don’t know the answer. I’m not good at answers. I’m good at questions.
The other common thing that people suggest is to have an accountability partner. This I’ve also tried, so a blogger friend, and I created just a little Facebook group where we could share our goals for the week how we’re going, let’s each other to review things, you know, just a very simple informal thing. I also didn’t work for me because as much as you know, I’ve quite liked and respect this person. It doesn’t matter to me if I report to them that I haven’t done something.
So these two Most common things, reward rewarding yourself and accountability don’t work for me because that doesn’t mean enough to me. And that probably sounds really bad to say like, I don’t care if I’m accountable. And obviously there are things that are Yeah, I’m accountable for pay my rent my bills. I’m very, very anti speeding, so I’m accountable in terms of driving at the speed limit and worried conditions. But in terms of things that are, I guess, intangible, I don’t have enough intangibles or anything because it’s more about meaning to me. I haven’t found the things that mean enough that they are a reward or a fee.
I don’t know if fear is the right word. And you think about accountability. I guess it is for you to sound strong. Like fear to me is like, Oh shit, I’m gonna die. And I mean, if you’re going to die because your accountability partner is going to Because he got something wrong, we didn’t do it then. Well, you chose the wrong accountability partner. And I forgot what my point was now. But I think it’s the fact that Yeah, well, I mean, I guess as much as I hate the word, let’s go with fear. Neither fear
nor the reward system work for me. And that’s because I think I am interested driven. And I came across this in the comments of some article, and it really resonated with me is that I can do a lot of things in a short time and all that sort of thing. If I’m interested, if I want to, and what I guess I need to work out is what triggers that interest.
Because that’s my motivation. Sometimes, sometimes it’s selfish and it’s, you know, like, I want to complete NaNoWriMo I want to win I want to write this book. You know,
I’ve been doing NaNoWriMo for a decade. I wonder when it finally selfish motivation. But it worked. So that’s fine. But I don’t know how this applies on larger scales. Because until I’ve got that interest trigger, I don’t do things. So I’d like to hear more about how you are motivated how you use rewards. If you use rewards. Do you use accountability? Does that work for you? I’m really interested to hear what you think about these topics. You can hit me up on social media or by email if you don’t want to say anything publicly.
